Gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people's hearts, and they will learn the truth. 2nd Timothy 2:25 ♥ Let Jesus speak gently to your heart

Little John and a Kingdom Life

Make Way Partners. I’ve written about them here before, and on Facebook many times. But for those that have missed it, they’re a Christian mission agency committed to prevent and combat human trafficking and all other forms of modern day slavery by educating and mobilizing The Body of Christ. I learned about them from reading the book “Passport Through Darkness”, written by the Co Founder/ President of MWP, Kimberly Smith.

One of the things that impressed me so much about MWP is that they went where no one else would. Places like Darfur, Sudan, and the Nuba Mountains. Places other people said would be too hard, too expensive, too this, and too that, to get to. Apparently they weren’t introduced properly to the God that Kimberly Smith loves and serves! Nothing is ever too anything for Him.

It’s now been three months since I first read Kimberly’s book and I can’t rid myself of the imagine of children as young as 3 and 4 being on their own in that land. A land where they have to hide from the animals, the people that want to sell them into slavery and force them into Islam, and even when they can manage to stay away from all of that… there’s always the lack of water and the starvation that finds them regardless of how good they become at hiding from all the rest.

In “Passport Through Darkness” I read where they passed a little 4 year old boy, that they named John, on a road they were traveling on, but were unable to take him with them (you’d have to read the book for the why and all other important details and you should) and I can’t get him out of my head. To make it even harder to forget this little boy, John, they were able to snap a picture of him and that image haunts me.

Four.
Years.
Old.

Scared.

Alone.

That just should not be. Not ever. I pray for him and my prayers often end up being that he’s now with the Lord and that his journey to Him was quick and easy somehow. That his time of such extreme fear, loneliness, hunger, and probable hopelessness was short. I just can’t stand the thought of him out there still – though he’d be many years older by now.

All of these thoughts bring me back to the fact that I can’t just do nothing. God has shown me that there is a need for some of His people to get help in so many different ways. They need to be prayed for, fed, given medical care, shown the love of Jesus Christ that we here in America are so good at talking about. Now that I have been shown these needs, I can’t un-know it, nor do I want to.

Little John wouldn’t go to any of the camps for people displaced in the wars and the reason was that he was terrified of being snatched and forced to worship a god he didn’t believe in. He was a four year old Christian who loved God more than most of the people I’ve met in my whole life and that…. breaks my heart the most.

What does it say about us here in America, where we’re free to read Bibles and love Jesus openly with no fear of being tortured or killed, that in a place where food is a luxury so you know owning a Bible is rare, that a FOUR YEAR OLD CHILD is a better Christian than so many of us? That he was willing to die at four years old all alone, and probably not a quick, never mind pain free, death, but instead a slow death by starvation, thirst, lion or hyena attack, or worse. He chose that because to him it would be better to die in any one of those ways and die a Christian, than to be captured and possibly be forced into doing something that would go against what he believed the God he loved would have him do.

It’s become my belief that while they need us there to help them get food, clothes, and other basic needs, we also need them… We need them to show us true joy in the Lord and what real sharing looks like. We have much we can give to them, but I believe that they can give us even more.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 11:28, “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” It seems that many of them understand this verse in ways that many of us do not.

He also tells us in Luke 9:23-25, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed?”

I believe that Jesus is asking us to give up our lives for His way of life, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of reading in the New Testament to see that the way Jesus lived is nothing like the typical American life is lived now. I truly want to pick up my cross and follow Him into a completely different life than I’ve ever known, a Kingdom Life where Jesus is truly my Lord. I have no doubt that there’s a lot of joy waiting there, a different kind of joy than any I’ve ever known so far… a Kingdom type of joy. A joy only truly following Jesus can give.